Tiresias

Tim Howard is a penalty saving machine iirc. If Krull is bad at saving penalties, I'll take that, he's good at everything else...apart from distribution. Hope he works on that a lot over the season, needs improving.

We have enough cover imo with Obertan back soon, Sammy and Santon able to play either wing really, so I have patience, still absolutely gutted that he's out so long. Hope he manages to stay fit for a whole once he returns.

What we need to be doing is pointing at Andy Carroll and saying; look what happens to players when they leave here. (forget to mention Enrique)

The trouble with 4-3-3 for us I think is that while it would bring in Guthrie perhaps alongside Cabaye and Tiote, I'm less sure about the front 3? Best in middle with Ba and HBA with free roles? Leaves full backs with little cover. Having said that a very very tasty midfield so worth a shot. Allowing Cabaye a more forward position would be nice

I suspect it's more that Pardew tends to try to give fairly honest answers a lot, so they asked him directly, and maybe said more than he should have, but maybe thought it'll warn them off sufficiently. Really we need to see if Tiote is agitating for a move, and tbh would think we should be tell him to shut up and stay, its hardly like Modric has gone on strike despite the very public desire for him to go. I think recently the fear of that has led to a lot of players sold just because they ask to go, business wise it makes sense to sell players if they could run down their contract, but don't think that's a danger yet with Tiote. Optimistically if we have to sell him, we've done some good business recently, Graham Carr has been pretty outstanding, if we can reinvest even half the money it's credible we'd come out stronger. I have more faith than I did at start of summer that we can come out stronger from a transfer window than went into it, even if we don't see the large sums thrown around.

If accepting we have to sell him, that's a nonsense anyway, if we want to be competing with the Man Us of the world we need to be able to keep hold of our best players, I hope they make sure to have a replacement lined up immediately, rather than selling then frantically searching around for the last few hours. Fingers crossed will come to nothing The other hope is that we have a gem in Mehdi Abeid, though way too soon to know

Who did Jonas turn around to give a hug to as they were walking out? Nasri and Ben Arfa chatting, then de Jong gave Nasri a gentle shove to get going lol DON'T TALK TO MY VICTIM

Pardew doesn't take people off if they;re playing well, don't think it's anything to do with Santon. It'll tale a bit for Santon to get the same understanding with the defensive line, wonder if Pardew is waiting for a run of easier games to bring him in

sammy looks fine, didnt have the chance to do too much though.

think Best is good enough at holdup, preferable, but it is a role we need to consider, Ba doesn't do it

For me its no coincidence that Raylor has fallen apart against higher quality opposition, Santon needs to play against better teams, but Raylor could be experimented with again against poorer opposition

In a world where torres goes for £50m Tiote is worth all the french league

when Ben Arfa does something it's high quality enough to get a wankfest, it's a question of how frequently in a game he displays that. Hence wanking over what he does, but overall performance not brilliant. He's getting more influential every time he plays though and earned a 7 from me, though that's maybe kindly ignoring his penalty giveaway

nonsense not british

that should be disallowed, not from a long throw

The weakness (and not a fatal weakness) of playing players on form even when theoretically better players available is that when the form goes you have to suddenly bring in the other player without being bedded into the team, and this is a bad time to do that, so it's a dilemma. I reckon bring in Santon though, we need to be strong on flanks, can';t afford a repeat of that performance.

RVP is one of those players who if one on one with keeper just never messes up...

i should stop defending players sometimes, i kept saying mertesacker got too much schtick then he does something like that

seconded

bleh hope we stubbonly refuse, but i suspect we'll lose him

Sinclair is pretty great isn't he

Contact with arm to Micah Richards back. Ok doesn't absolutely have to but letter of law it;s a foul

hmm less sure think it was very soft but micah dived because of HBA lightly proding him in the back...very harsh of course but arguably ref has to give it

Richards went down for the penalty but HBA had jumped all over him, HBA had moved back to cover for Saylor being off field and so was putting in a defensive shift...shows why he's not asked to do that much. Silly silly cockup, hopefully he'll learn from it

LEAVE HATEM ALONE!!!!!1